Service agency vows to make good out of bad

Posted: Sunday, December 09, 2001

By Lee Shearerlshearer@onlineathens.com

A bad report card from the state will be a springboard to excellence for a Northeast Georgia agency that provides services for mentally ill, mentally retarded and substance-abusing persons, according to the agency's director.

Advantage Behavioral Health Systems Executive Director Terry Tellefson, named to head the agency in January, said he expected a negative report when he requested an audit by the state Department of Human Resources six months ago.

The audit identified dozens of areas in which Advantage was not meeting state standards -- shortcomings that ranged from poor record-keeping to a group home where clients were left unsupervised to the way Advantage handled prescription drugs -- an area ''of great concern to reviewers,'' according to the report, which Advantage received Oct. 31.

Advantage has been plagued by a series of problems since the past three years, beginning with a 1998 criminal investigation of some of the agency's Elbert County employees over abuses that including selling life insurance policies to severely handicapped people naming Advantage workers as beneficiaries. Nine employees were fired and two pleaded guilty to felony fraud charges earlier this year.

The agency has also come under fire for race discrimination by the NAACP and from within Advantage. More recently, Advantage has struggled with ongoing budget deficits -- a problem faced by similar agencies statewide, Tellefson said. Earlier this year, the agency was running at a $320,000-per-month operating deficit.

Advantage has an annual budget of about $26 million and employs more than 500 part- and full-time workers in Clarke and nine surrounding counties.

Its clients include between 9,500 and 10,000 people in those 10 counties, according to Tina Tarbox, Advantage's public relations director.

The report card will look a lot brighter when state auditors return in about six months to see how successful Advantage has been in correcting the deficiencies, Tellefson said. Some steps were already under way when reviewers came in early October, he said.

The state audit noted some positive things, including the fact that Advantage was ''taking a pro-active stance by requesting the review,'' according to a letter that accompanied the report from Karl Schwarzkopf, acting division manager of DHR's Division of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse.

The leader of the six-person review team also noted improved staff morale, which had been very low in the months before Tellefson took over the agency's leadership.

But the report also detailed a long list of deficiencies. Among them:

Some staff members felt minorities were not treated well and that the work force was not diverse enough.

Some of the agency's clients felt ''they were not treated with dignity and respect,'' and said staff members ''seemed rushed and did not appear to know their jobs.''

Record-keeping systems varied from site to site, and in several sites reviewers could not find important records.

When reviewers checked in at one group residence, contract workers who should have been on duty were absent -- a frequent occurrence, residents told reviewers.

Unlicensed workers were allowed to monitor and dispense prescription drugs, actions which only more highly trained medical workers, in consultation with a physician, are allowed to do.

Many of the deficiencies have been corrected, Tellefson said.

Clients at the residence home where the workers were absent have been moved to another one with better supervision, he said.

Procedures for handling medicines have been changed to ensure only appropriately licensed workers can be drug monitors, and the center has brought in consultants from the state to help not only building a better records system, but in handling Advantage's financial troubles, he said.

A task force of employees and people outside the agency has been set up to work on diversity issues, Tarbox said. A newly hired human relations director, who is African American, is working to ''achieve closure'' to the race issues within the agency's work force, ''realizing that some healing needs to take place,'' she said.

Even though Georgia ranks low among the states in funding services for mental illness, mental retardation and substance abuse, Advantage can be one of the best local providers ''not just in Georgia but nationally,'' Tellefson said.